Did some watering and liquid feeding.
Bagged up another developing melon in a net bag to protect it from slugs. That's four developing now.
Also, I noticed that my maincrop potatoes are starting to get blight already, although it seems not to be spreading too quickly yet. Went around and removed all of the suspect-looking leaves. Ended up with just over a bucket full of them.
For some reason this year, the blighted leaves are so far concentrated almost entirely on the bottom-most, oldest leaves. This seems pretty unusual to me, as usually middle-aged leaves seem to be the first infected (they lack the vigour of youth to protect them, but they are still fully exposed to the air and rain, and so spores get onto them easily).
I'm not sure yet whether this unusual phenomenon is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, the old leaves in the shade of all of the other leaves are the least useful for the plant and have the least ability to photosynthesise, and so even if I have to remove them the plant doesn't really lose much from it. But on the other hand, they are closest to the soil and therefore the tubers, and so therefore might increase the risk of the actual potatoes becoming infected. In previous years, although my main crop have always gotten foliage blight, I have managed to avoid any infected tubers. Hopefully this year won't be different.
Bagged up another developing melon in a net bag to protect it from slugs. That's four developing now.
Also, I noticed that my maincrop potatoes are starting to get blight already, although it seems not to be spreading too quickly yet. Went around and removed all of the suspect-looking leaves. Ended up with just over a bucket full of them.
For some reason this year, the blighted leaves are so far concentrated almost entirely on the bottom-most, oldest leaves. This seems pretty unusual to me, as usually middle-aged leaves seem to be the first infected (they lack the vigour of youth to protect them, but they are still fully exposed to the air and rain, and so spores get onto them easily).
I'm not sure yet whether this unusual phenomenon is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, the old leaves in the shade of all of the other leaves are the least useful for the plant and have the least ability to photosynthesise, and so even if I have to remove them the plant doesn't really lose much from it. But on the other hand, they are closest to the soil and therefore the tubers, and so therefore might increase the risk of the actual potatoes becoming infected. In previous years, although my main crop have always gotten foliage blight, I have managed to avoid any infected tubers. Hopefully this year won't be different.
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